Richard Meredith | |
---|---|
Occupation | Author |
Genre | Adventure travel |
Notable works | One Way or Another, Which Way Next, Driven Together |
Website | |
mercurybooks |
Richard Meredith is a British writer of adventure travel novels best known for Driven Together, [1] his account of the 2007 first car crossing of the new Asian Highway.
Meredith and his co-driver Phil Colley drove from Tokyo (the Highway's farthest point East) to Istanbul (farthest West) in a journey facilitated by the United Nations, whose Commission in Bangkok had finally secured a pan-Asia agreement on the new road network in 2005 after nearly 50 years of negotiations.
Intended as a major benefit for international trade and towards alleviating poverty among Asia's poorer nations, the system is one of the most important developments in global transportation for centuries and resurrects many of the ancient Silk Road trading routes between Asia and Europe.
Meredith, from Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, recruited Colley, a linguist and travel expert from south London, after being lent a V8 Vantage sports car for the trip by Aston Martin who wanted to put the car through a live durability test and to demonstrate its prowess to China's car-buyers. [2]
From Japan, they followed the Highway's main AH1 and AH5 routes along the system's ‘central corridor’ across China and many of the former Russian states in central Asia and eastern Europe.
Including considerable customs clearance problems, ferry trips and minor crash repairs, the journey of approx. 10,000 miles from Tokyo to Istanbul and then onto London, took 49 days. It was independently logged [3] and monitored throughout and ended with a reception and press conference hosted by Aston Martin's then-CEO Dr Ulrich Bez at the Hilton Hotel in Park Lane. China's President Xi Jinping has committed $1 trillion (£750bn) to what he calls the Belt and Road initiative. [4]
A former national newspaper journalist and business magazine publisher, Meredith turned to adventure travel writing after selling his Holcot Press business in 2000.
He published his first novel One Way or Another [5] in 2002 after what he called a 'Gap Year for Grown-ups' in which he described falling into a series of adventures and misadventures while armed with a back-packers' round-the-world ticket from British Airways.
His second book Which Way Next [6] came after he drove a Daewoo family hatchback saloon from Luton to South Korea with a young student companion in a hair-raising journey that included running the gauntlet across war-ravaged Afghanistan and the Khyber Pass.
A member of the Society of Authors and a card-carrying journalist, Meredith has also published an anthology of his experiences as a writer titled Views From the Front Line [7] and a number of local history publications under a pen name including Cromwell's Garrison Town. [8] and a series of articles titled Bond in Bucks. A non-profit imprint to encourage local authors was launched in 2016. [9]
By linking his various activities to fund-raising for charity and major events, he has helped to generate more than £535,000 in recent years for causes including the Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital in the UK, the SOS Children's Villages organisation in Nepal which he re-visited on the 10th anniversary in 2013, [10] and UNICEF programmes to reduce the number of deaths of young people on the roads of China.
Meredith was born in Barnet, Hertfordshire (now north London) to a family whose name of Reynolds on his maternal side can trace their ancestry to before the English Civil War. His great uncle was Air Marshal Sir Brian Reynolds (1902–1965), the former CinC of Coastal Command, while Lt Thomas E.S. Reynolds, another uncle, won the Military Cross at Ypres in 1918. The painter Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–1792) was believed to be a distant relative.
He was educated at Great Ballard School near Chichester and Allhallows (now closed) outside Lyme Regis which he left before his 16th birthday. In 1988 he took a short degree course in Business Growth Management at Cranfield School of Management.
As a journalist, he trained with the Herts Advertiser in St Albans and reached the Daily Express in Fleet Street via Thomson newspapers and the Press Association. At Thomson's Evening Echo at Hemel Hempstead his newsroom colleagues included John Clare and John Coldstream (later with the Daily Telegraph ), Tony Holden, the Royal biographer and Stephen Pile, the TV critic and author; while at the Express, his era included the brief editorship of former ITN newscaster Sir Alastair Burnet, Chapman Pincher, the Defence Correspondent, and Jean Rook, Women's Editor.
His time there added to the family's long association with Express and Standard newspapers. His grandfather Harry was a printer with the Evening Standard , his mother was billeted in World War II with the family of Reg Wootton, the Express's Sporting Sam cartoonist, and his cousin Frances worked in the commercial department.
In 1975, in partnership with friends from the Express and elsewhere, he launched the Northants Post weekly newspaper in Northampton (closed Dec. 2016) and later sold his shares to start the Holcot Press Group, a publisher of business magazines and directories which grew into a national organisation from a base in Milton Keynes. It was sold in 2000 to the Zoa Corporation.
A keen sportsman, Meredith is a former playing member of the Saracens and Northampton rugby clubs and once played tennis at Junior Wimbledon. His daughter Clare is a barrister and son Robert was a finalist in BBC2's Design for Life competition with Philippe Starck in 2009.
In recent years he has taught English-related subjects at secondary school level and as a visiting university lecturer. Richard currently lives in Newport Pagnell.
Aston Martin Lagonda Global Holdings PLC is a British manufacturer of luxury sports cars and grand tourers. Its predecessor was founded in 1913 by Lionel Martin and Robert Bamford. Steered from 1947 by David Brown, it became associated with expensive grand touring cars in the 1950s and 1960s, and with the fictional character James Bond following his use of a DB5 model in the 1964 film Goldfinger. Their grand tourers and sports cars are regarded as a British cultural icon.
The Farthest Shore is a fantasy novel by the American author Ursula K. Le Guin, first published by Atheneum in 1972. It is the third book in the series commonly called the Earthsea Cycle. As the next Earthsea novel, Tehanu, would not be released until 1990, The Farthest Shore is sometimes referred to as the final book in the so-called Earthsea trilogy, beginning with A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan. Decades later, The Farthest Shore follows the wizard Ged in his final adventure.
Newport Pagnell is a town and civil parish in the City of Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England. The Office for National Statistics records Newport Pagnell as part of the Milton Keynes urban area.
The Aston Martin Vanquish is a grand tourer introduced by British luxury automobile manufacturer Aston Martin in 2001 as a successor to the Aston Martin Virage (1993).
The Aston Martin DB9 is a two-door grand touring car. It was produced in Gaydon, Warwickshire, by the British carmaker Aston Martin between 2004 and 2016 as both a coupé and a convertible, the latter known as the "Volante".
Sir David Brown was an English industrialist, managing director of his grandfather's gear and machine tool business David Brown Limited and more recently David Brown Tractors, and once the owner of shipbuilders Vosper Thorneycroft and car manufacturers Aston Martin and Lagonda.
The Cannonball Run is a 1981 action-comedy film directed by Hal Needham, produced by Hong Kong firm Golden Harvest, and distributed by 20th Century-Fox. Filmed in Panavision, it features an all-star ensemble cast, including Burt Reynolds, Dom DeLuise, Roger Moore, Farrah Fawcett, Jackie Chan, Sammy Davis Junior and Dean Martin. The film is based on the 1979 running of the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash, an actual cross-country outlaw road race beginning in Connecticut and ending in California.
The Asian Highway Network (AH), also known as the Great Asian Highway, is a cooperative project among countries in Asia and the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) to improve their connectivity via highway systems, funded by G77 Gold Standards. It is one of the three pillars of the Asian Land Transport Infrastructure Development (ALTID) project, endorsed by the ESCAP commission at its 48th session in 1992, comprising Asian Highway, Trans-Asian Railway (TAR) and facilitation of land transport projects.
The British carmaker Aston Martin developed the vertical–horizontal (VH) vehicle platform to serve as the basis of most of the mass-produced vehicles in its lineup manufactured between 2003 and 2016, comprising the DB9, followed by the Vantage, DBS, Rapide and Vanquish. The limited-production Virage, DB10 and Lagonda Taraf also used this platform.
The Aston Martin DB5 is a British grand tourer (GT) produced by Aston Martin and designed by Italian coachbuilder Carrozzeria Touring Superleggera. Originally produced from 1963 to 1965, the DB5 was an evolution of the final series of DB4. The "DB" designation is from the initials of David Brown who built up the company from 1947 onwards.
The V8 Zagato model Aston Martin was a grand tourer of the 1980s. Just 52 examples of the coupé and 37 of the convertible were built between 1986 and 1990. The coupé was first unveiled at the 1986 Geneva Motor Show, and orders were quickly taken despite only showing the drawing of the car.
The Aston Martin DB6 is a grand tourer made by British car manufacturer Aston Martin and was produced from September 1965 to January 1971. The "DB" designation is from the initials of David Brown who built up the company from 1947 onwards.
Lagonda is a British luxury car brand established in 1906, which has been owned by Aston Martin since 1947. The trade-name has not had a continuous commercial existence, being dormant several times, most recently from 1995 to 2008, 2010 to 2013, and 2016 onward.
The Aston Martin DB2/4 is a grand tourer produced by Aston Martin from 1953 until 1957. It was available as a 2+2 hatchback saloon, drophead coupé (DHC) and 2-seat fixed-head coupé. A small number of Bertone bodied spiders and a coupé were commissioned by American businessman Stanley H. Arnolt II.
The Aston Martin Virage is an automobile produced by British luxury automobile manufacturer Aston Martin as a replacement for its V8 models. Introduced at the Birmingham Motor Show in 1988, it was joined by the high-performance Vantage in 1993, after which the name of the base model was changed to V8 Coupe in 1996.
Francis Kingdon-Ward, born Francis Kingdon Ward OBE, was an English botanist, explorer, plant collector and author. He published most of his books as Frank Kingdon-Ward and this hyphenated form of his name stuck, becoming the surname of his wives and two daughters. It also became a pen name for his sister Winifred Mary Ward by default.
Tickford is an automobile engineering and testing business in Newport Pagnell, Buckinghamshire, known for tuning and such products as the 140 mph Tickford Turbo Capri.
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Reynold's News was a Sunday newspaper in the United Kingdom, founded as Reynolds's Weekly Newspaper by George W. M. Reynolds in 1850, who became its first editor. By 1870, the paper was selling more than 350,000 weekly copies. George died in 1879, and was succeeded as editor by his brother, Edward Reynolds.
The Lagonda Taraf is a full-size luxury car that was produced in 2015 and 2016 by the British carmaker Aston Martin under its Lagonda marque. Designed by Marek Reichman and considered "the finest of fast cars" by Aston Martin, the vehicle is based upon the vertical–horizontal platform, which it shares with the DB9 and Rapide. The Taraf debuted in Dubai in 2014, with manufacture commencing in the subsequent year at the facility in Gaydon, Warwickshire. Initially intended for sale exclusively in the Middle Eastern market with a limited run of 100 units, Aston Martin later expanded the car's availability to several other countries and ultimately built 120.